Healing Through Self-Discovery: Why do the Hurt, hurt?

It was not a very pleasant day outside. It had been raining consistently for the past week throwing my discipline to shame and the murky depressing weather had already diminished my little desire to go outside to nothingness. So, I hug my mug of tea closer to my body, when a thought flashed by. I sunk into my chair in realization as the epiphany made me absorbed in my feelings, the flashing figure by the window followed by the roar of a vehicle made me turn my gaze at the rain drenched trees outside my window. The droplets dripping from the leaves made my vision blurry as they turned unfocused. 

A few days ago, while I was playing with my nephew who is now two, I realised I had problems that might require healing. And to put into context I had just come out of three years of healing and no movement in my life so another healing episode was the last thing on my mind. But I realised, I did not know how to love. It was so bizarre, but it always been this way. Having grown up in a household with an emotionally unavailable father and a mother who was emotionally dependant on my father, adding to the already existing issues from years of neglect, trauma and abuse, was my inability to love. I had never been in a relationship, in fact I used to look at people happy in relationships and wonder what they saw in love. I was not a people person and I used to get drained from my little relationships, so I always had them at arm’s length. But, now as I stare at my two year old nephew who probably has no idea what he is doing and acts solely on his instincts, I feel his actions trigger my inner demons and made me sigh in annoyance because I knew I never let myself be that free. Nor was I tolerated as much as he is now. They made mistakes with me and learnt how to love him now. I was quite happy to be honest, as having another traumatised child was the last thing this family needed but I was annoyed because I found myself tempting to make the same mistakes they did. He was barely in the stage he could understand and the least he would do was give me a toothy smile, but the reason I felt so helpless was because he was not a generally naughty boy and I felt he was playing by his intrusive thoughts and I did not want to restrain his curiosity.

Now that we have made the situation clear, I was also realizing the fact that I was slowly losing whatever desire I had of meeting him beforehand. And it made me scared. Genuinely scared because after years of healing, I was looking forward to creating meaningful relationships and based on my little knowledge I cannot act as willfully as I did before. I sat there questioning my past efforts and the only sentence that ran over and over in my mind was that I did not know how to love, my love is conditional. i hated myself for a moment there. 

And the rest of the day passed by me crying out loud, it felt cathartic, as I saw people fall in love and the happiness that made their eyes glow, stung me. Not in a ‘why can you have it not me' way, but a ‘boy, how much was I depraved of ?'way.  Another session of self-pity and victim-hood later, I washed my face got up and went to work. The week passed by with that thought flashing through at times but it never lead to another crying session.

The smell of tea brought me back to my thoughts, as the sock in my feet felt fuzzy, the dinging of the oven got me get up and pull out the banana bread out and whiff like a dog on a hunt. I realised, that with every wound I sustained, emotionally, I turned off one human aspect of me. I knew before that people who do not feel kindness, empathy, love and companionship were all people who felt the said emotions too much and it also had me in awe of how smart the human consciousness was and what lengths it would go to protect ourselves but having it sink into you that you were a person who once was able to love in abundance, is cathartic. The next part is not to be discussed because I went into the grey area called crime and justice outside of innocent victims who were affected by the actions of emotionally numb people but when you think deeper, you realise you had always been human and those inhumane thoughts, sometimes intrusive and the anger, the pain, the resentment were all parts of you seeking justice for the injuries you sustained, be it, out of ignorance or circumstantial, is, in a paradoxical sense, beautiful.

You have always had your back, it seems.

Does that actually mean their actions are justified?

I don’t dare say yes. I have spent years asking myself where my faults lay. Neither did I ask to be born here nor did I ask for abuse. The hurt that came my way came through circumstances, which I did not understand that I blamed them, blamed myself and finally stopped blaming anyone. It seems like we are all at fault. The perpetrators are at fault for failing to recognize their mistakes act from their emotions, I am at fault for internalising it and letting it affect me by failing to introspect. We are at fault for failing to educate ourselves and letting our small minded limitations run our world.

The universe is indifferent. If you do not correct yourself, you will be left behind with regrets. But there is no rush right? After all, life is a marathon, not a race. Moving ahead or falling behind does not matter, what matters is we finish the race with fond memories and excellent companionship through its lessons.